Felipe Alfau - Chromos

And then I met his eyes. He was sitting opposite me at the other end of the long table, near Garcia. It was that Fulano something-or-other, the little meek man I had met once before. There were the thick lenses that met my eyes with an impact which then melted into yielding suction. I could not look away and my hand came down slowly and set the bottle on the table. The thick lenses acted like microscopes focused in his interior and I was once more in the extraordinary position of reading a man’s mind, suddenly, without warning, in this incongruous place:

This time his thoughts were not willful daydreaming like the last time. He was concerned and obviously very much concerned with his dreams which had taken place when asleep. He was going through them and remembered them well enough. There was that one about the woman who had kidnapped a child under circumstances that made it the horror crime of the century. He was not clear on whether the woman had been finally located, caught, or had given herself up. His mind concentrated on the last possibility because his thoughts, which had thus far been a hazy jumble, sprang into brilliant colors.

The woman had announced that she would give herself up, that she would return of her own accord with the body of the child to make whatever amends were expected. He was standing on Riverside Drive, looking up the Hudson River, and the whole length of the drive was packed with an expectant mob, clamoring for justice, long cordons of police endeavoring to hold it back, swaying back and forth all along and all the way from the line of buildings to the shore that was devoid of train tracks and had a very narrow beach.

Then they saw the little rowboat floating down the river with the woman in it. The day was very bright and everything on the other side and up the river very clear and there were millions of extended arms, pointing fingers like the bayonets of a marching army.

The boat turned and slowly, with deliberation, made for the shore. As the boat approached, the angry roar of the mob rose, fearfully, brutal avenging, like a howling storm. When the boat reached the embankment, the woman bent over, picked the body of the child up from the bottom of the boat and stood up facing the mob. He could see her clearly although she was quite distant from where he stood. She was wearing a dirty white sweater, a brick-colored skirt and a black beret. She waded calmly toward the beach bearing the child’s body in her arms, walked straight into them and then the mob broke loose and engulfed her.

Then he decided to go home but it was difficult to find it in this enormous city. The town was enlarged and idealized to fantastic proportions. The buildings were like mountains and their lower part carved out of the very rock in immense arches and columns, the roofs so enormous that what amounted to cities were built upon them. And here he must find his own little room, his home, and yet it was pleasant to be thus lost and to look so hopelessly for a home.

Going up the buildings was like climbing a sierra. He knew that his room was not up there, that it was down below, way down, but as he did not know where it was, he could always explain that he was looking for it, should anyone question his motives. It was a good reason and he wanted to go up.

Then he came down and wandered through deserted streets at night. All of them ran downhill and he kept turning toward the east until he came to a building under construction. The street floor was still open, strewn with rubbish, broken bricks and cement-caked wheelbarrows, a forest of steel beams and wooden uprights.

He walked deeper and deeper into the building and with an unexpected feeling of joy knew that he was lost and therefore would reach at last the cellar of the old house. This was the moment when he always began to descend the wide, long ramp which led to the subterranean town. He had been looking forward to this with happy anticipation. It was a miniature city and he must walk carefully so that in places his head would not scrape the rocks on top.

He walked across a square not bigger than a medium-sized room, and through one of the streets that led away from the square he could see a little elevated train pass. It was like a toy train. He saw light shining on the small sidewalks from the doorways of these dollhouses. He was too big to go into any of them, but he did not want to go in anyway. He wanted to find the cellar of the old house.

It was very late at night and he knew that the night would go on and on beyond the point where the sun would have risen and set many times until it would never rise again. Although the puppet town was deserted because it was so late, the air was charged with hostility, the enemy entrenched in the houses. He walked faster and took the street that led from the opposite corner of the square. Here too, the light from the little doorways struck the pavement like a series of hurdles in his way which he must negotiate. Every time he passed a doorway, he felt the same creeping sensation up his back. All this part of the dream was very vivid because he had dreamed it many times. Then he came as expected to the doorway on the frame of which was the face. It was the face of a toothless old man with a sharp nose, twinkling eyes and long white hair. It was a face made of reddish rubber, like some small ones he had had when only a boy, and it was contorted with cackling laughter, laughing at him. He raised a stick he had picked up along the way and struck at the face and the laughter gradually died out like a motor faltering to a stop. He walked still faster and arrived at the cellar.

He went straight to the trapdoor on the floor, lifted it and began to descend to a second cellar and then a third and a fourth, until he emerged into the sumptuous hallway with the long row of elevators on one side and the luxurious lounges on the other. There was much activity and people milling around and, mixing with the crowd, he entered one of the elevators unnoticed. He was carried up and found himself alone again.

He was walking up a steep road on the other side of the Hudson River, which was surprising because he knew that he had been moving east. The road went up, walled by high rocks on each side, and he was dragging a body which might be his own. He walked up the road laboriously pulling at the body which grew heavier with each step and then at the top of the road was his home. The door was ajar and there was light inside. At the threshold he let go of the body and entered. The room was in great disorder, as if a struggle had taken place in it. A lamp was overturned but the light still burned. He looked madly about and remembered his own words very well. He said to himself:

“Is this my life?”

I became conscious of the voices all around me and found myself, without any effort on my part, outside the man’s mind, but I was disconcerted and wanted to regain some composure by looking at the outside of other people as one is supposed to do. The Moor was looking at the door, no doubt waiting for Dr. de los Rios to come in, and I realized that my visit into this man’s thoughts must have taken an incredibly short time. This did not help my desired composure and I looked at the other faces there more intently, seeking normality and distraction.

At the other tables I recognized the best importations from Spain. There was the dancing team, Lunarito and Bejarano. There was a famous newspaperman and foreign correspondent who had to his credit a long list of deportations from various countries. If one wanted to meet him, the Moor had said, one had to catch him between trains. He was sitting with the best Spanish importer of antiques who owned a very exclusive shop on Madison Avenue and had lent for the occasion the old Spanish tapestries and shawls which hung from the balcony that ran along one wall of the dining room and gave things an air of magnificent refinement contrasting harshly with all this bottle drinking. The other man at their table was the owner of a Spanish newspaper then published in New York.